


Milestones

by aqueousEscapist



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 04:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aqueousEscapist/pseuds/aqueousEscapist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which babies are hard and Bro Strider is raising one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Milestones

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a preview chapter of sorts, so bare with me, please. Dave is about 7-8 months old at this point, but we will actually start the story when he's a wee bit younger than this.

You lifted him from the crib into your arms and held him to your chest for a moment. He was still sleepy, letting out a yawn every now and then, but was starting to wake up for the day. His fingers clenched and unclenched in the fabric of your shirt, and he moved to rub his face in your shoulder.  He yawned one last time and pushed away from you enough to look around the room a little. He squinted his blood coloured eyes a bit and blinked as he tried to fight the sunlight coming in the window, but after a moment, just buried his face in your shoulder again.

“Nah, little man, it’s definitely time to wake up.” you whisper as you head over to his dresser. You dig around in the drawers with one hand for a moment and pull out a pair of tiny baby jeans, and a tiny baby shirt with a heart on it. He knows what’s coming now and pushes his face further into your shoulder, somehow hoping you’ll reconsider.

You think for a moment, how funny it is that babies think you can’t see them, just because they can’t see you. It’s cute, even.

But you pick up a diaper and drop it to the carpet before you sit yourself down and lay him on the floor in front of you. He’s still fighting the sunlight, going so far as to bring his hands up to cover his eyes. He yawns again but doesn’t really move otherwise. You push his hands out of the way to unzip his sleepers, then fight a little to tug his arms out of the sleeves.

“David, this is not how we get dressed.” you lightly scold him under your breath -you know he’s not really going to get it. He lets out a soft whine but doesn’t make any further noise through the ordeal.

When it’s all said and done, you’re sitting on the floor with a somewhat happy baby in your hands, standing with your help on the carpet in front of you. He’s a little wobbly, but doesn’t seem to care because hey! He’s _standing_ and this is just the shit.

But all good things must come to an end, and you lift him to press a kiss to the tummy that was peeking out from under the shirt before getting up (and oh god you hope no one saw you do that). You leave the room, leaving the mess to clean up later when you put him down for a nap, and head to the kitchen to grab him something to eat. You put him on the floor to crawl around a bit while you prepare a bottle and pour yourself some cereal, bringing the box out to the living room to dump a handful on the table for him. You watch for a moment as he uses the table ledge and the futon to pull himself up to get it.

He’s such a strong little shit.

But when he does reach it, he just swipes the cheerios onto the floor and plops himself down to eat them there.

Alright.

He’s strong, you’ll still give him that, but he’s _lazy_.

“Davey,” (you wouldn’t normally call him that, but you’re looking for the nickname that just… _fits_ ) “it’s not even 9am and you’re already making a mess…” you frown as you head back to the kitchen. You put the box away, then grab his bottle and your own cereal before heading back to the living room. You put your bowl on the table and hand him the bottle, making sure he’s got a good hold of it before letting go and searching for the tv remote to turn on some cartoons. But in the two seconds you take your eyes off him, he’s pulled himself back up and is reaching towards your breakfast and you’re just not having any of that today.

You pick up your bowl as you find the remote in the cushions and frown at him. You point at the floor with the black device and wave it around a little. “Hey, no. No, we’re not playing the game where you eat all my food today. You threw yours all over the floor. Eat that.”

For a moment, you think there’s going to be an argument with the little dude, but he just looks at you for a second before dropping himself to the floor and eating his gross floor cereal again. You flick on the tv and start at your breakfast, letting him crawl around the room a bit. He mostly just lies in the middle of the room playing with his toes or trying to put things in his mouth. Usually his toes. Thankfully, you have most things that can hurt him picked up and put away, and anything that is within his reach doesn’t seem to be of any interest to him.

He’s gurgling to himself across the room and rolling from his back to his tummy and back again, and you’re a little bit worried because isn’t he supposed to be crawling by this point? He doesn’t crawl at all; he just rolls where he wants to go. Is this normal? You move from the couch to the stack of books on the table across the room, taking your cereal with you and trying not to step on the leftover pieces on the floor. You put the bowl on the table and start removing books from the pile, trying to find one that covers child development. You’ve bought about 12 of these things, at least one of them has to-

Yes.

_Good._

Although after 10 minutes of flipping through the book, you haven’t learned anything except cereal gets soggy and gross if you forget about it, and babies apparently think their toes are hilarious -judging by that deep belly laugh about three feet from you.


End file.
